TED talk with Midway Project director Chris Jordan

This talk is elaborating on what I’ve previously read and watched about the Midway Project and Chris Jordan presents some powerful artwork in the first half – imagery constituted by what I feel is unnecessary human waste. Firstly this artwork is really inspirational because of it’s power and it’s forward meaning, and I will look back on this artwork for some ideas and a new perspective to my artwork.
Jordan then expands on what I really liked about his movie trailer (posted recently) about accepting and embracing deep emotions caused by examining and feeling another being’s suffering, and how that is a result of our consciousness which is completely natural and shouldn’t be oppressed or ignored because that is exactly the reason for this type of issue: I believe that humans conscious minds have been restricted and therefore devolved over many years because of our self-minded, profit-minded, monetary society, and Chris Jordan explains this concept with obvious wisdom and I have connected with what he’s delivering in this talk because I believe in what he’s saying.
Towards the end of the talk, Jordan played a short piece of footage from the film he’s creating about the Midway Project and I became quite emotional witnessing one of the unsettled baby Albatross’ die. It actually makes me disgusted that an animal so pure and harmless has to suffer as a result of the restricting of the human consciousness generated by greed and ignorance in society. After accepting these emotions and feeling compassionate about the welfare of the birds, I experienced an overwhelming feeling of ambition to do something about not only this issue, but other worldly problems I am aware of. I feel like this is what Chris Jordan invokes – about embracing deep and unfortunately negative emotions, because if I hadn’t have allowed myself to get so upset, I wouldn’t be able to say I am going to be active about these issues.
This research has helped me develop what I think I need to know about the mind-world relationship for my dissertation and can then take this accumulated knowledge to compare with artists perspectives and therefore deliberate how this establishes their practise.